


Rai the absolutely mundane average 100% normal human teenager

by an_earl



Category: Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Comedy, Drama, Except it's a Slice of Cadis Etrama di Raizel's Life, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Slice of Life, Suspense, Violence, Yes this fic has all of this in it.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 19:53:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17925272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_earl/pseuds/an_earl
Summary: “I have parents,” Raizel says, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can weigh them for trouble, inspect them for how strictly necessary they are. “Two of them,” he adds sweatily.“Cool, what do they do?”What do Raizel’s imaginary parents do?“They…they…”Cadis Etrama di Raizel awakens in the 21st century after a slumber of 820 years. He is the other sovereign of Lukedonia and he has been away too long. The Noblesse must return. But he kind of wants to hang out with his friends at PC Bang some more.





	Rai the absolutely mundane average 100% normal human teenager

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to take place in early Noblesse, before the Lukedonia arc - and even before Regis and Seira arrive, so there are no other known nobles expect Rai. But I somehow mucked the timeline up because the Trio feature. Therefore, it takes place before the Lukedonia arc when Regis and Seira are away...researching stuff...or visiting Grandpa Gejutel or etc. 
> 
> Special thanks to qdeanna and Laryna6 on AO3 for betaing this work. :)

When the bell rings, Raizel is last to rise from his seat, last to get to the cafeteria to line up for ramen at the counter. He understands that lunchtime is a rush, that everyone wants to bolt to the door and flood into the cafeteria to save the best seats for their companions, because they valued being seated next to them. He understands that there is a strategy to this too. Some students rush to find seats, some rush to order food. The ones that order food order more than they need, and they bring it back to tables their friends have already saved for them.

Not everyone orders ramen at the counter, and since it is the best food the school has on its menu, this confuses Raizel. Why wouldn't everyone just get ramen? It is the most delicious food.

But Raizel does not bother with rushing to find a seat, or to order food. He too, is part of this strategy. He'd handed money Frankenstein had handed to him to Shinwoo at the morning gate. Shinwoo was always first in line at the cafeteria, he is always first to rise from his seat because Ikhan wakes him up before the bell rings, and he is first to sprint to the cafeteria. He buys five ramen dishes and hauls them all to a table.

Raizel goes to find a table — or it more accurate to say — he goes to find his companions. He spots Ikhan in the crowd before Ikhan spots him, but when Ikhan does spot him he climbs onto the bench seat to stand and wave wildly, worried that Raizel might pass him. It does not occur to Raizel that he should do something, signal to Ikhan that he has seen him.

A teacher walks by at the worst possible moment, telling Ikhan off for standing on his seat. Ikhan apologises, but then pats the bench beside him to invite Raizel to sit as if he did not just get in trouble because of him.

Then Suyi and Yuna arrive, having brought fizzy drinks at the vending machine. Raizel is envious of them because they have complete mastery of the vending machines, something that has always eluded him. When he is thirsty, there is nothing he can do but stare at the orange and pink and green coloured cans, and then stare at the different coloured and different shaped coins in his palm until they all blur together like the small instructions printed on the machine.

"Do you want Coke or Fanta, Rai?" Suyi asks him.

Rai stares at the cans for a long time.

"Do you want red or orange?" Suyi asks again.

"Just give him the Fanta. He's never had it before," Ikhan helps him say.

As everyone eats and drinks, Raizel listens in on their conversation.

"How's my hair?"

"Ugly. Why?"

Shinwoo shoves Ikhan from across the table. The table shifts a bit, causing everyone's ramen soup to splash over the edges of the bowls. Raizel anticipates the scuffle and lifts his bowl just a centimetre off table to save it.

"Because Mrs Kim is up my ass about it, she says it's too long and messy and against the school rules. But it's not too long! It is  _kiiiinda_  messy, but it's always like that! That's just how my hair is."

"But it's not against the rules," Ikhan says flatly. "Like. It's not even as long as mine. Not even as long as Rai's. Have you considered if Mrs Kim just hates you?"

"The colour is probably just too harsh for her to look at. Like a roadside stop sign," Suyi adds, pouring some of Ikan's drink into her own finished can. "Besides, she has problems with everyone's hair. Why should I tie it up? Not like we're in the science labs. Is it going to catch fire spontaneously during math?"

"Our Principal doesn't tie up his hair," Yuna says shyly, smiling.

"The  _hypocrisy!"_  Suyi slams a fist onto the table.

Ikhan snorts. "Just don't make eye contact with her."

"What if she wants to make eye contact with me?"

"Then play dead, I guess. I dunno how to fix your hair."

"Wait. I have an idea." Yuna slides out of the bench, pushes Suyi along to the side, and then slots herself back in next to Shinwoo. "Lean down a bit, Shinwoo. You're still too tall."

There's a hair tie on her wrist, sitting there like a bangle, a last resort in case gym time gets really intense, but all she has are her fingers in lieu of a brush. Yuna drags her fingers through his hair, trying to bunch it up into a tiny pony tail.

"Ow. Ow. Ow."

"Sorry.  _Sorry._  Sorry."

Rai watches on. He knows Yuna isn't pulling very hard; Shinwoo's protests are terse and flat, kind of like the robotic voice that says 'please leave a message after the beep' on the other end of an unpicked up phone. Yuna is only a little sorry, after all, as she continues pulling at his hair.

Shinwoo yelps, but he is not in pain, and Yuna apologises, but she is not really very sorry.

"Oh for the love of—" Suyi gets up as well, going around to the other end. She takes out a small comb, like one Frankenstein carries on his person at all times, and starts brushing Shinwoo's hair even more forcefully.

"Ow! Ooowww!" Shinwoo says, but he does not pull away from Suyi or Yuna, when he easily could.

Rai watches. He is envious of his companions — his friends, as they have explained to him in great detail, once out of a dictionary — they speak freely around one another without judgement, and they joke and jeer, and they say mean things like you have ugly hair or bad breath or your eyesight sucks you can't count to ten — but each one of them knows it is never meant to hurt. Never meant to make them feel lesser. It's not lying either, because everyone knows it's not true and accepts this. It is just human. It is just closeness. But Raizel can't tell the difference sometimes, and that scares him.

During gym time when he stands near a goal and watches a ball roll listlessly in, some boys on his team say,  _'well, good going, Rai.'_  But that is not good going. Rai knows this. That is  _very_  not good going. Yet they say  _'good job,' 'real nice, new kid.'_

But then Shinwoo says,  _'I'll show you what's really nice'_  and throws a ball inches past one of their faces, bouncing loudly off a wall, and Raizel knows just because people say nice things doesn't mean they want to sound nice at all.

It's a hard thing for him to understand. How do humans tell, if saying one thing means something else? How could Raizel say to any one of his friends  _you suck_  while not meaning it? Even if he did mean it, he could never make the word come out of his mouth. Frankenstein is human, like his friends, but if Raizel told Frankenstein  _you suck,_ he knows that Frankenstein will instantly drop to his knees, asking him, possibly with tears in his eyes, ' _please tell me exactly how I suck, Master. I will change, I will do better I will—'_

Besides, he would never mean it. His friends are special to him. Their words, contradictory, quick fire, with doubled-meanings, secret meanings, buried jokes, have burrowed deep into his skin, into his heart, where he spends infinite hours at night deciphering them. Committing them to memory. Treasuring them in his chest.

_Rai. If I fail this biology test, I want you to kill me. Just put a gun to my head — and kill me._

_Rai, let me tell you the funniest story. I forgot to do my homework, can I copy yours?_

_Rai, you have to copy my homework. Yes, I'm mad. Now YOU copy MY homework._

No he will not kill his friend even if they asked very, very nicely. Where is he supposed to get a gun? He doesn't want to kill anybody. That's not a funny story at all. Are they really mad at him if they still let him copy their homework?

Raizel wants desperately to understand his friends. To be in on all the fantastical things they say. To belong, and understand, and engage — he wants desperately to be one of them — but he is tactless.

What if they expect him to join in one day? To say mean things he doesn't mean, that mean the opposite of things. It's so hard. It makes no sense.

But then he remembers things being said to him like,  _"Sir Raizel, it is good to see you again."_

_"My Lord, you are welcome at my daughter's coming of age ceremony."_

_"We honour you Noblesse, we are thankful for all you do."_

_"Sir Raizel, may you rest in peace."_

And he wonders if any one of them ever meant it. Maybe if they said meaner things to him, he'd never had woken up in a box, in an empty, dusty room — in a totally alien world he doesn't know how to exist in, let alone belong in. Deep down, really deep down in Raizel's just barely functioning conscience, he knows that none of the Clan Leaders would have saved him a seat at the lunch table, nor ordered his favourite ramen and taken an extra packet of dried vege seasoning for his taste.

He feels like a fool to think back on the past.

But he still finds himself doing it often.

Raizel scoffs, breathing out sharply, trying to expunge these thoughts at once, wash them out of his system.

"What?" Shinwoo challenges, and Raizel's head swings from the dark ages back to the present in one fell swoop.

"You have something to say about my hair as well? Well let's hear it!"

The entire table stares him. Raizel blinks, his mind going cloudy. He opens his mouth, wanting to say something, but not knowing what. After a long pause in which everyone waits fervently for his answer, he decides on:

"You…look dashing."

Shinwoo beams, his face lighting up like a bulb. Raizel has made the correct call.

"See. Rai is on my side."

Then everyone at the table starts laughing. Raizel isn't sure if they're laughing at Shinwoo or himself, but if they're laughing at Shinwoo, he mentally apologises to him. He's made the wrong call yet again.

You look dashing. It's something Frankenstein has said to him before, when he put on one of his newly made, freshly pressed uniforms, and stood still like a statue for Frankenstein to assess.

Maybe Raizel should have said something one of the others would have said. Tao who gets up and wanders into the kitchen with just his pyjamas, a T-shirt with the popular korean pop band SHINee on it, saying to M-21, who is standing in his pyjamas, a slightly more roomy tank top than his usual:

_"You look like a possum mistook your hair for another possum and started an orgy on your head."_

_"Thanks, Tao."_  M-21 paws at his hair twice, then resumes drinking bitter coffee Raizel cannot stand.

 _"No problem,"_  Tao adds.  _"Oh, Sir, morning, Sir."_

Or maybe Raizel should not parrot anything those guys say, as it seems very risky, and Raizel simply cannot risk things with his friends.

"And —  _tada,"_  Yuna sing songs, leaning back to admire her handiwork.

Shinwoo rises to his feet, pretending to toss something behind him as if flipping a long mane of nonexistent hair, like those colourful after school commercials encouraging Rai to buy rose scented shampoo at any local supermarket in his area.

There, on the top of his head, was a small, red tree of a pony tail. Standing upright.

Shinwoo, and his neatly tied up hair.

"How's my hair now, Ikhan?"

"You can see the black roots like that. You need to get it re-dyed."

"Answer the question shorty!"

"Fugly."

"Hey!" Suyi points a sharp, accusatory, well-manicured finger in Ikhan's face. "I spent all of three minutes doing his hair!"

As the table dissolved into bickering beside him, Shinwoo sighs, leans into his palm and looks to Raizel. "So? What do you really think?"

Raizel blinks. He stares at Shinwoo as if all the answers to twenty first century social cues are tucked in his hair.

"…I don't understand. Your hair is red. Why are the roots black?" Rai says, boggled.

"Why is my what —  _what?_  Wait. Rai." Shinwoo claws at the table, like he _cannot even,_ "Rai. Did you think I had red hair? Naturally red hair?  _—Bright strawberry red hair?!"_

He did. He really, really did.

Just like he thought Suyi's nails were really 1.9cm long and coloured pastel dusty rose pink with sparkles, and how he was on good terms with his fellow nobles who planned his assassination and betrayed everything he'd bled himself dry to serve.

 

* * *

 

In between classes, shoved towards the lockers as students sped past him, Raizel encounters Takeo picking up an apple core and a few stray plastic wrappers off the ground.

"Hi," Takeo says discreetly.

"Hi," Raizel says politely, and smiles.

"Er…what…what's happening up there," Takeo says, gesturing towards his head. He is itching not to attach  _Sir_ on the end of every sentence.

"That is the new hair style Yuna, Suyi and Ikhan helped me with."

"Oh. Huh. I see." Takeo purses his lips, nodding soberly.

Even Raizel can see something is wrong. So he assures Takeo, "It may look unorthodox as I am alone. It is supposed to match with Shinwoo's."

"Oh. I understand," Takeo says gravely. But he clearly does not, because he adds, in just a whisper, "You know, your hair is long enough to be tied from the back. Like mine," he adds sunnily, "Not straight up from the top. Do you — do you want me to help you even it out a bit?"

"I decline," Raizel says.

He worries about offending Takeo however, so he says, dumbly, "My friends did my hair."

"Ok. Ok." Takeo nods some more. Then he wishes Raizel well on his Korean literature class before going back on hall patrol.

In his Korean literature class, Ikhan scoots his chair next to Raizel's. He, too, has changed his hairstyle to that of Shinwoo and Raizel's, except Ikhan's hair is quite long compared to them, and his single upright tree of a pony tail is more like a fountain or small umbrella falling all around his head.

"Hey, hey, hey," he whispers loudly. "Check it out, Rai. We're twins!"

"We are not. But I understand the sentiment." Rai beams at him.

If it was Shinwoo in his seat, Raizel thinks Ikhan would say  _Hey, hey, hey. I'm ugly. Like you._ Raizel beams harder. He is learning.

"Boys," Mrs Minhee says. "If you're going to do that, do it at the back of my class. Where I don't have to look at you."

 

* * *

 

Once class is over, Raizel packs up his things and books and waits by the vending machines. Over time, a lot of kids rush to the machines, ripping out spare change out of their bags to buy the last chocolate flavoured Up&Go or some shrimp flavoured chips or other yummy thing Raizel hasn't had the good grace to try yet.

People mill around him, some of them rushing out the door straight back to warm, loving homes, with parents to cook them dinner, and brothers and sisters to help them do their homework, and pets to play with in the nearby memorial park. Some drag their violin cases off the top of the lockers, marching with intent towards their after school orchestra practice, or grab their rackets for the badminton team, or their soccer clothes, or play scripts.

Some people are like Rai, waiting for their group to arrive and for them to spend the day hanging out. Maybe go to the mall, or watch a movie, or go to the beach — or anything, anything in the world. There are so many possibilities, so many things to do. They can do anything. Go anywhere. Raizel is envious of each and every one of them who have a life to live, who choose what they want to do and go and do it.

What do they want to be, at night inside their warm suburban houses, in the rooms they grew up in? Where do they want to go? What do they like to do? Every passing student makes Raizel ravenous for this totally humdrum, mundane information; he has the power to take that information, take it straight from their minds, but he refrains. Because that is rude.

Raizel wonders what playing a violin is like, his own hands far too clumsy and large. He wonders what acting in a play is like, how people can speak so clearly and emotionally, with intent. With practice. He sometimes wishes he could play sports better. Then he doesn't have to stand dumbly like a block of wood in the middle of the court as a fellow player trusts him too much to be smart and not hand the ball to him. Then Shinwoo and Ikhan and his friends don't have to say nice-mean things to defend him.

Because he is useless in this human world, just as he was useless in Lukedonia.

Raizel was once the Noblesse, the avatar of power, the other Lord to an entire nation of people who praised his name, who loved and feared him. He killed people as easy as drawing breath, ripped blood from people's veins like emptying out a capri-sun, and when he was not passing judgement on criminals he spent time standing watching the world pass him by.

Right now, he seems so insignificant next to the little boy running with his flute to practice, with his whole future ahead of him. In the human world, the Noblesse means nothing and his powers of destruction means less. They're a fun thing to put on TV shows like You Who Came From the Stars and Strong Girl Bong-Soon, make-believe, entertainment. No one is afraid of the new kid who can barely tie his shoe laces or spell his long, long name or catch a basket ball.

No one really cares about Cadis Etrama di Raizel in the twenty first century. People care about Rai. And Raizel cares more about Rai than anything else he has ever been.

He stares at the vending machine, watching more skilled students press E-3, D-2, A-1, and get exactly what they bargained for. He wishes he could be that proficient one day.

"Rai!" Yuna calls, going down the hall to meet him, "We've been waiting for you for thirty minutes. We were supposed to meet at the  _other_  vending machine, next to the  _cafeteria,_  silly."

 

* * *

 

They go to the PC Bang.

While Raizel sits on the swivel chairs, trying to move his character from one end of the abandoned swamp log cabin to the other end, Suyi stands behind him, changing his hair style. "Ok, that's enough tree hair," she'd said. "I bet yours is long enough to tie up nicely from the back."

She is good at Call of Duty and coaches Rai how to aim and shoot — again, because his friends must re-explain it to him every time — to kill zombies. At first it seemed very agreeable, he no longer had to undertake the stress-inducing objective to kill his friends in-game, and it was finally impossible for Shinwoo, Ikhan and Yuna to continuously kill him.

Raizel manages to murder just one zombie just as they clawed at the boarded up windows in the log cabin. Yuna, Ikhan, Shinwoo and Suyi cheer for him, causing one of the employees to regretfully ask them to be more quiet.

But they soon dissolve back into chatter regardless. Yuna invites everyone over to her house for snacks, and everyone, including Raizel, is baffled by this, because it feels as if Yuna's parents are never home.

"They pretty much are never home." Yuna shrugs, pausing long enough for a zombie to start eating her face in-game. Ikhan calmly walks over and gets rid of it. "They're always working. Dad's overseas again. Mum works until late at the hospital. She usually makes it back to have dinner with me though."

"That sucks. M'sorry, Yuna," Ikhan says.

"Don't be. Their work is important and I have all break to spend time with them. How's your Mum? She mentioned she was sick last time we were over, had to stay in her room."

"Oh that was just a cold. She's all better now!"

"Oh yay!"

"I'd love to return the favour and invite you guys over to my place again, but my Mum says it can't happen unless I clean my room until there's not a speck of dust left," Shinwoo deadpans.  _"We can't have your friends know you live like this, Shinwoo!"_

"We already know that you live like that, though," Suyi says, and everyone chuckles a bit.

They play for a little while longer, concentrating hard on boarding up windows in the log cabin before the next level up.

"Say," Shinwoo says, but his tone of voice is not the same as before. "It must be hard, not being able to see your parents for so long, Rai."

Raizel's insides stop a moment. He does not know how to answer. If he had a parent once, he cannot remember them.

Some part of him thinks, but how can that be? Everyone has parents — even Frankenstein, once upon a time. But another part of him knows, he simply did not ever know them, as they had to perish for the new Noblesse to succeed.

But he cannot tell them that. They are human, they expect a human answer, they do not know just how inhuman the being sitting next to them in the swivel chair, drastically failing at killing zombies, truly is.

"It is fine."

Raizel regrets saying this immediately. It is too terse. Too emotionless. Even for someone as graceless with words as him, his friends will notice — like they notice how he simply can't bear the thought of killing digital manifestations of his friends on a computer screen, like they notice how he is too polite to be able to run and overtake others at the cafeteria, how he made everyone wait so long because he misunderstood which vending machine to stand next to.

They notice, but they don't say anything, because for humans this would most certainly come across as a sensitive subject, for their quiet friend who wants to hold onto his secrets. Secrets he cannot give them, if he wants to remain their friend, their  _equal._

"I have parents," Raizel says, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can weigh them for trouble, inspect them for how strictly necessary they are. "Two of them," he adds sweatily.

"Cool, what do they do?"

What do Raizel's imaginary parents do?

"They…they…"

He lies and lies. He has to. He says they are a businessman and a businesswoman; Raizel recently watched a sitcom where two people bickered across their low lying office compartments, typing up important documents, receiving heavy packages full of important things, talking to important sounding people on the phone, slamming the phone down with the force of a hammer.

He says his parents also type a lot on keyboards, write important documents, receive heavy packages and talk loudly on the phone to many, many people. Many people of course. Many other businessmen, obviously.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Raizel can almost imagine himself a boy. If he ever was one, he cannot remember. He cannot summon up images of his childhood, only strange, faraway, alien fantasies. Like a child with pudgy cheeks and short limbs, the ones that appear in lego adds and after school TV shows. He relies on TV a lot to tell him how to act and how human reality is, and he briefly wonders if this is good for him — perhaps those older humans on the radio are right — too much TV _is_  rotting his brain.

But he imagines a smaller him, clutching airplane models, drinking from juice boxes, listening to a mother and father who he has just invented to be more human.

It doesn't really work.

All it does is remind him of how removed he is from Yuna, Suyi, Ikhan and Shinwoo's world. A world where they go to school, where they worry about their hair and talk in instantly understood riddles and study for the upcoming science exam. Raizel, as if just figuring out a particularly obvious part in a puzzle, realises how asinine he is. How distant he is.

Yuna, Suyi, Ikhan and Shinwoo think Raizel grew up in a warm suburban house in another country, that he played with airplane models and drank from juice boxes, that he will do things and go places, that he can do anything, become anyone. They, blissfully, thankfully, do not know that Raizel is a killer, or the fact that people routinely beg for their lives on their knees before him, and that he disregards that display every time and watches the light go out of their eyes…

They are just children. He is nothing like them and, frankly, he has nothing in common with them.

As they walk towards Yuna's house, kicking loose stones down the street, chewing berry flavoured gum, at peace with saying nothing, Raizel stops. Like an old train running out of steam, in the middle of the track. Stranded.

"…I don't really have parents," he says.

Ikhan stops in his step, sighs out slowly, then tackles Raizel with an embrace so hard even he has trouble adjusting. Suyi and Yuna take turns hugging him, but then Shinwoo traps them all in one giant hug circle, Raizel all but drowning in confusion in the middle.

"It's ok, man," Shinwoo says. "We…don't take this the wrong way, but we kind of expected it. That you lost your parents, I mean. Otherwise why would you never talk about them or go back to see them?"

Then, much like a zombie getting shot in the head, it clicks. They think Raizel's imaginary parents, the businessman and the businesswoman, the people who type and talk on phones, are deceased.

It physically pains Raizel to accept their hugs and sincere condolences, standing there like a storefront mannequin. They might as well be hugging a pole.

 

* * *

 

"Hey Raizel," the Lord once said, smiling at him from his throne. The Previous Lord. The only one Raizel can manage to picture on that lofty throne, even though he is not there anymore, hasn't been there for years and years and years, the new Lord having taken his place. Raizel has been away from Lukedonia for too long. Clan Leaders have changed and clans have changed and the people who live there are different now. They call themselves Noblesse, moved on.

But in his memories, the old Lord stares down at him with his knowing eyes, gauging Raizel's irrational desires like reading a book, and says, "Why don't you live here from now on?"

"I decline," he says immediately.

"There is no reason for you to remain alone." But there is. There was. Is there? "I want you to live here with me."

"I decline."

In his memories, the old Lord giggles girlishly, much like the girls in Raizel's homeroom every so often from their beanbag corner. "Do you want to be Lord? After me, I mean."

"I decline."

The Lord shifts in his seat, his long, blonde hair draping from one arm rest to the other. He looks at Raizel questioningly. "Why do you need to be alone all the time?"

He doesn't answer. He never answered him when he was alive, and now he can't answer it now the Lord has gone to eternal sleep.

Now that he's — dead. In human terms. It seems much more finite, less euphemistic. He's dead.

 _Why, Raizel?_ — Because, because —

Because his name is Cadis Etrama di Raizel and he is the Noblesse. Because he is a judge and executioner, and he must do his duty for his people, even if they hate it. Even if he hates it, to the very core of his being — because this is a necessity his people need performed. It is a necessity that makes people fear him, so he will confine himself to a tiny, small room in a big old house, isolated from the rest of Lukedonia to give everyone else a better night's sleep. He protects Lukedonia, and he protects the rest of the world from Lukedonia. He goes out, does his job, then disappears back into his house.

And it used to be so easy to say  _'I decline'_ to the Previous Lord when he asked doltish questions, offered unwalkable alternative routes. It used to be so easy — he knew who he was, he knew what the Noblesse was supposed to do. The Noblesse was absolute — but now he's not sure.

Everything he was so sure of before is like — like sand, sifting between his fingers as he tries to hold on, crumbling into dust, flying away.

_"Hey Suyi, want to go watch this C-list movie with me and Rai after school?"_

_"Why don't you get a life, Shinwoo. Rai, you should come hang out with me."_

But Shinwoo already had one.

Why did Raizel decline getting himself a life?— Other than running away from his own problems, and creating one hundred million billion more problems for other people in the future — the future he is living right now.

All he'd ever wanted was for people to feel comfortable around him. He wanted to serve Lukedonia this way too, by keeping his distance. But what has that distance really achieved? Urokai, Zarga, Roctis, Edian, Gradeus, Lagus — they betrayed him even though he did this for them, and their people. He did this thing to himself, and they still betrayed him. Lukedonia had him presumed dead. Nobody came to look for him for eight hundred years. No one but Frankenstein.

"Now," said Mrs Minhee said to the class during Korean Lit. "Let's review the facts, make a list of them — or do a brainstorm, if you'd perfer."

Raizel's brain has not stopped storming since he'd woken up this century.

He was the Noblesse. People needed him.

He disappeared. The world kept going on without him — for eight hundred years, in fact.

Lukedonia has almost completely forgotten him.

The people who do remember him despise him, but now they think they have killed him so it is fine.

Conclusion:

He just. Doesn't know how he fits in in the world anymore.

He has a feeling that if he just. Goes to sleep again, and never wakes up. The world would still continue on without him. The Noblesse just — fades away. Like candy floss once it hits your tongue.

"Hey Rai?" Ikhan pokes his cheek, Rai turns in his direction. They are at Yuna's house, sitting on the floor surrounded by candy wrappers and burger king boxes. "Are you daydreaming? Helloo? It's your turn already. Pass go and collect two hundred dollars."

"I am no longer in jail?"

"Gosh Rai you suck, you moved like half the board last turn." Shinwoo shifts the little man on the horse with his finger, as if emoting for the little man on the horse he wants to leave.

Raizel takes the dice from Yuna and rolls it across the board.

"Now take your money and get out off my property," Shinwoo says.

Raizel takes the monopoly money and stands up as instructed.

"No, Rai," Yuna says patiently, "this is my property and you're welcome to stay. Want me to help you move your horseman?"

He feels a little dizzy all of a sudden. As if he is staring down at humanity from the high place he used to reside, from the high window of a mansion looking down at people scuttling on the floor, from the air as he hovers with wings on his back — like once he knew only that he was above all this.

But, Raizel thinks, he has probably just eaten too many Kit Kat bars, judging from all the red wrappers that tumble off him.

 

* * *

 

"Later guys!" Ikhan and Shinwoo stick their heads out of the car as they drive off. Because they live close by in the same area, Shinwoo's mother came to drop off Ikhan on the way. "Don't forget, we're meeting at the cafeteria vending machines on Monday as well!" Shinwoo shouts, directing it at nobody in particular, yet Raizel can deduce it's for him. Suyi had already gotten picked up by her chauffeur an hour before.

Only Yuna and Raizel were left.

"So Rai, are you staying for dinner? I need to know so I know how much to cook, later."

"No." Raizel shakes his head, he lags a moment before fully processing what she just said. "You…can  _cook?"_

Yuna chuckles. "Yeah. Yeah I can cook."

Raizel's mouth drops open, he gazes at her like she just told him she's the one who invented all vending machines.

"You pick that stuff up when your parents are hardly home, haha."

She laughs a little more, _hahaha,_  even though what she said was distinctly not funny. "…You must be lonely," Raizel says. It's an inappropriate thing to say to her, but it slips out.

"Hm. Sometimes, yea. But not all the time." Yuna throws one of the last chocolate bars at Raizel before opening one herself. Raizel doesn't catch it in time, it hits his chest and bounces off his bunny-shaped guest slippers. "Cos I have you guys trashing my house, duh. And we hang out at the mall and PC Bang all the time! Don't feel bad for me, Rai."

She shrugs, somewhat self-conscious. "I'm glad to have you guys trash my house." Then she sighs, runs her fingers through her hair. "Do you get lonely?"

Raizel finds there is a lump in his throat, and he finds it hard to swallow.

He has forgotten his place. He _wants_ to forget his place.

_Is there a reason for you to be alone?_

"…Not anymore." Raizel bends, picks up the chocolate. "I have not been alone a moment since I came to your world." Yuna doesn't say anything about his choice of words.

"I have all of you," he says. "We have that in common."

Yuna's smile widens and widens, bits of chocolate still stuck in her teeth. She's happy, and her happiness infects Raizel as well. "Welcome to 'our world' then."

Outside, the day gets darker. Yuna glances at the clock and frowns. "If you're not staying for dinner, who's coming for you?"

"I am walking."

Yuna blinks a few times, as if she has heard something she can't quite parse. As if Rai has just told her he plans to swallow five knives from her kitchen in front of her.

"You know the way home?" she says, astonished. She's at the sink filling up a cup with tap water for Raizel, which overflows. She has her own mug with a cat with very wide eyes on it that she drinks from.

"I mean — of course you do! I never doubted you!" But then she says a little more seriously, "But you should hurry then, before it gets dark…"

Raizel says goodbye to Yuna, a kind of goodbye that makes it clear they will definitely see each other again. Raizel makes it down the driveway before Yuna slams open the door, cracking it against the wall, and shouts, "Don't talk to strangers! Don't accept food from people in vans! —Even if it's Kit Kat, Rai!  _Even if it's Kit Kat!"_

Then Raizel goes down the path he came, going down the streets. As he walks, the streetlights flicker on. It startles him briefly, but he has learned to carry on in the face of any strange intervention this new world has to offer. He goes past the convenience store where Yuna and Shinwoo and everyone had bought the afternoon snacks from, past the the skatepark they happened by, the drinking fountain they stopped at.

Raizel retraces his steps. He keeps walking as the day gets darker, until he realises that he made the wrong turn about five streets ago and is very extremely lost.

Then he starts to take detours. Wandering down the brightly lit streets, going anywhere. He starts to imagine things, like schoolboys do. He can become anyone. Do anything.

He is someone named Rai. Just Rai. Rai studies math, science, biology and literature at school, plays doodle-jump on his phone, guzzles five cans of fizzy drinks a day. Rai walks by himself to school, where he changes his hairstyle because someone asked him to, worries about his high score in first person shooters. Rai watches movies where he imagines himself in all sorts of awesome, fantastical situations — riding in a fast speed train, celebrating birthdays by putting cones on his head, swimming in a swimming pool!

Rai has friends, and Rai has a home, and Rai has a life.

Rai squeezes past some cars in a 7-11 parking lot, bumping into a woman on her evening run.

"I am sorry," Rai apologises, and passes her.

"No…I'm  _sorry_ … _too._ " The woman huffs, then hauls herself up by holding onto the hood of the parked Nissan. She seems tired from her run. Do people usually run in their work clothes? She looks like she can be one of Rai's imaginary sitcom parents, wearing a grey blazer, grey pencil skirt, back tights, no shoes.

Rai immediately spins around. This woman isn't on her evening run. No one goes on their evening run barefoot in tights. She was probably wearing heels, but she'd dropped them somewhere. She's running for her life — running away from something.

Rai — _Raizel_ — looks ahead of him, but there is no one there. He turns back.

"Are you alright?" Raizel asks from across the parking lot.

The woman turns back too, jittery, full of nerves. She looks around for the source of the query only for her eyes to widen as they reach him. She hears Raizel, but sees a high school boy.

"…Just fine."

Raizel opens his mind. Her fear — like treacherous waters that have her submerged, like a rolling, toppling avalanche that has her buried and frozen — floods into him at once. He is submerged in it, buried and frozen. And all at once, clear as day, Raizel feels the fiery, blinking spark of a noble presence holding her down.

Again. It is only human. Saying something, and meaning the opposite.

But, he thinks, when it is taken to the extremes — he understands.  _Blood falls him his mouth. Are you alright, Master? Yes, I am._

The woman's eyes light up, some of that fear coming back to the forefront in full force. She puts her hands to her head, pawing at it twice, as if wanting to scratch something deep within them out. "Stop it! N _o no no_  — you're like  _him_  — you're another one of  _him_ —"

It's pathetic, how long it takes Raizel to notice that spark. Despite the cars, there seems to be no one in the 7-11 except the salesperson, whom Raizel can't see from this distance. But there might be cameras here in the parking lot. If he does something now, he could risk a scene. He can get away easily of course, but he is in his uniform, and he's watched police shows — what if they show up at Frankenstein's house? At the school? What if they bring lawyers? Or the army?

The woman wheezes suddenly, dropping to the ground. There is no fanfare, no scream or gesture. Just — air leaving her, and then her legs giving out.

Raizel drops his school bag in the middle of the lot, closing the distance between them in a second. He bends to help her, but stops short of touching her. Her mind is a mess, blaring like a radio trying to be heard over a full-blown thunderstorm, buzzing and popping, barely making sense, but Raizel can hear it:  _don't touch me don't touch me get away from me get away—can't—breathe_ —

Raizel doesn't touch her. He gets away from her, hovers a hand in her general direction, and focuses his authority, sharpens his will into a point.

"I give you permission to breathe."

She takes a breath, loud and gaping and strangled, then takes more of them, great lungfuls until she can look up at Raizel in utter terror. "How — _haah_  — who?"

"Who ordered you not to breathe?"

 _"Haah —_  Who are you?"

"Answer me. Who did you make a contract with?"

The woman looks at him, stopping her wheezes. Her eyes go shiny-reflective, until tears spill out of them like a dam breaking free, and she cries and sobs into her sleeve. "I thought— I thought he would help me! He said he could make things better — he said that he'd make me stronger—"

"Who? Where?"

_"Who told you you could breathe?"_

The woman goes quiet, cowering at the voice. Raizel glances behind him. A man with short, black hair stands on one of the light posts. He wears typical Lukedonian garb — except he's replaced the black pants with blue jeans.

He tips his head to the side. "Ha-eun?"

 _"Master, I—"_ the woman, Ha-eun, says, and Raizel  _reels._ She garbles, her tears running down her chin, spotting her blazer a darker colour,  _"Master,_ I'm _sorry_ , I c _ouldn't—"_

"Couldn't what? Couldn't slip a little blood from some blood bags? How else am I going to get more volunteers, then?" He scoffs, petulant. "Honestly, how hard is it to listen to instructions—"

Raizel doesn't even listen to him. He's already seen everything he needs. He goes to Ha-eun, who is more scared of the noble than she is scared of him, and goes to a knee. "Ha-eun. The contract you have made in blood is false. It is not equal. Your contractor has not created a bond but a chain. In your tongue, it is called: _illegal._  I am going to break it."

Ha-eun goes silent, looking at Raizel as if he is made of pure steel. Totally cool in the face of certain death, unbreakable, unflappable. "Help me." Ha-eun's lips wobble, but she stops crying entirely. "Help me get away from him."

Raizel nods.

He reaches out. But the noble comes to ground level, grabbing hold of Raizel's wrist, a game machine claw clamping miraculously shut on target.

The noble looks down at him, sneering. "What the hell do you think you're doing to my servant, you _lowly ant."_  He lets go and flicks his fingers, face going satisfied as Raizel flies away into the 7-11 window — except Raizel does not do that, because that is undignified.

Instead, Raizel flicks  _his_ hand, flicks _the noble_  away, and has him smash across six cars. Glass sprays across the ground, pattering like shrill rainfall, glinting like diamonds, but Raizel ignores all this, turns to Ha-eun and says with all the sincerity he can muster—

"He  _sucks."_

Raizel faces the noble, who is pawing at the floor to get up.

He says nothing, his eyes glow deathly red, red like blood, red like rage, and pins the noble to his knees without so much as a word. The noble spits and jerks and claws, trying to get free, but his knees don't listen to him, they listen to Raizel now, and he rattles against his cage too hard, tearing his own muscles, ripping his own quads—

 _"AHH—"_  He screams, cursing in Lukedonian and Korean. "You — _you,"_  he spits, "You're a noble — a  _Clan Leader you—"_

"I am not." Raizel blinks, not amused. He breathes in, thinking about Rai. Just Rai. He sighs. "I am Cadis Etrama di Raizel."

No recognition swims through the noble's face. None. "Like hell am I letting you steal my bonded —  _like all hell!_ — Ha-eun!" the noble shouts, and from behind Raizel, Ha-eun stands up as if her limbs are being pulled by a string, her head lolling lifelessly to one side. "Attack!"

Ha-eun charges at Raizel, and Raizel instinctively puts up a barrier, a red iridescent soap bubble of a shield, but Ha-eun must listen to the noble, she  _has_  to do it, she has to  _obey_  — she keeps charging and charging, tossing her entire body at the barrier, slamming her entire soul against it — and Raizel gasps, putting the barrier down to stop her from hurting herself—

"Ha-eun," the noble says lowly, as Raizel is distracted. "I'm never letting the likes of him have you. Pick up a piece of glass."

The noble relays the last command through their perverted, one-way link. Poison fed down a conveyer belt, force-fed down her throat, injected into her brain. Ha-eun picks herself up, holding a shining piece of glass, and on that glass is a reflection of Raizel's face — stagnant, wide-eyed, flat and emotionless—

"Stop.

"Stop!

"I command you to stop,

_"I compel you to stop!"_

Ha-eun stops. The connection is hi-jacked and rewritten just before she puts the glass through her neck, Raizel's mind control overtaking the noble's. Ha-eun breathes in like a resuscitated woman, dropping the glass, which breaks into shards at her feet. They twinkle like tears. Raizel's eyes glow impossibly red, he exerts his own will over her, calling her towards him. Then he puts a palm to her chest and with a small, soft exhale of breath — forces the contract to  _break._

The noble in front of him yelps, as if something has been yanked out of him, like something he owned just slipped through the cracks, uncatchable. His control over his bonded bleeds away down the drain. "No — no, no — you can't break my connection _— no —"_

Their souls aren't merged. Finding the connection and snipping its thread is like cutting a tin can telephone.

Raizel, his face a blank, empty sheet, looks down on the noble who stole this woman's life. Made her do terrible, unspeakable things. Bending her body in painful, unnatural ways. "If it were a true contract, even I would have no power to stop you controlling her. But no noble with the privilege of having a true contract would do that."

Raizel glares at him.

The noble instantly stops breathing. His blood instantly stops flowing. His eyes instantly stop blinking, unable to look away, unable to even cry. Raizel holds this noble's life in his fingers, and he can stomp it out as easy as blowing out a birthday candle, as easy as tearing a candy wrapper, and the noble doesn't even understand his name, and Raizel doesn't even know his.

But he doesn't ask for it. "For the crime of creating a false contract, bending your contractee to your will, you have forfeited your right to breathe. I sentence you to forced eternal sleep."

It's understated, that term in his own tongue. Euphemistic. Raizel just slightly frowns.

"I sentence you to die."

Blood rises into the air out of nothing, sailing like petals caught in the wind. Something like a tornado razes its way through the parking lot, taking the noble's life with it.

Like wiping a ramen soup stain off a table.

 

* * *

 

Ha-eun sniffles, sitting at the high chairs at the closed lotto booth in the 7-11. Raizel is between the chocolate and lolly aisle. Should he buy Choco Pies or candy bars? Is everything that has happened to this woman his fault? How much money does he have left in his wallet? Why did it take that long to take care of a single criminal?

He's lost his touch. He's forgotten who he is. He wants to forget. But he never will again. He can't, even if he wants to.

Raizel goes to the counter to pay for his snacks, where the saleswoman leisurely takes off her earphones with a big smile. Behind her, the security footage from five minutes ago lag a bit. There is Raizel in black and white, looming over Ha-eun as she cowers away, scraping her knees on the rough concrete. He looks like a horror movie monster. A human-shaped imitation. Raizel blinks, shutting off the screen. He feels sorry to have to break it, but he must protect himself from being traced by humans.

"Thank you! That will be twenty-ninety five. Would you like your receipt?"

"No, thank you."

"Would you like to donate to underprivileged children in lower decile areas?"

"Yes, thank you."

The saleswoman smiles brightly, putting his donation — every cent he has left in his little wallet — into a box. "I know that uniform. A Yeran High student, are you? I knew Yeran kids were good cookies."

She hands him a mint for free.

Raizel goes back to the other end of the store where Ha-eun is sitting. He hands over the purchases to her, careful to keep his distance. All the wrapped goods come out onto the counter — Kit Kats, Mars Bars, Chocolate Pies and—

"Spicy ramen?"

A full six pack ramen unbalances and topples onto its side.

"…It is my favourite food. It will make you feel better," Raizel explains, twisting his wallet in his hands. Ha-eun smiles at that. She drags a Kit Kat towards her side of the counter, but doesn't open it.

"…So you're a noble? Like Master?"

Raizel's brows furrow, unable to stop himself from reeling, outwardly, like a three story shock of lightning down his spine, and Ha-eun notices immediately because she looks hurriedly away.

"I am a noble. Yes."

"I — I don't understand." She claws at her bloodied up pencil skirt. The glass she'd held had cut through her palm. "If you could do that at any time…why didn't you just do it before he came down? Before he…" She forces her mouth shut, swallows forcefully. As if she is swallowing glass and having a hard time of it.

Raizel, on the other hand, is still immaculate in his uniform. Without a single stray drop of blood, or even a ruffled cravat.

"…I am sorry," Raizel says. "I wanted to break the contract first. Otherwise…when I sentenced him…"

"I would have felt him die?" Ha-eun utters. She sobs once into her palm.

Raizel doesn't tell her: it would have felt like she was dying too. In fact, she probably would have died, the disgraceful noble dragging her down with him.

Ha-eun takes a fresh breath, smoothing out her skirt.

"Now what?" She manages a chuckle. Like Yuna. Except more sad, and endlessly more empty.

"Now it is  _your_  will that moves you," Raizel says. "…You can go anywhere. Do anything. Anything you wish."

Ha-eun huffs, like there is a joke Raizel is not in on. "Can I really go back to the way things were?"

He considers this. "For you. Yes."

The next moment Ha-eun looks him in the eyes, Raizel takes just one last thing away from her, the memories of her bondage dissolving away into nothing. As easy as a life draining out of a soul. Or a body. Dusting away like glitter sparkles.

 

* * *

 

Raizel continues walking.

As he walks, he thinks about the glass in the 7-11 parking lot, like who will clean it up, because what if people cut themselves – and the owners of the car, if they have insurance. He knows insurance is very important, he has heard human adults talking on the phone about it before. His imaginary sitcom parents, surely they talk a lot about insurance. He also thinks about the vending machine at school, if he can ever master its mysteries. He thinks about home cooked meals in the recipe sections of dated magazines, celebrity gossip that is already old news in the library.

These thoughts come at him out of nowhere, bubbles coming to the surface to pop. Aimless, meandering. He eats the mint the saleswoman gave him. It's a Mentos and he realises he can chew it. Then he tries very purposefully to think of nothing at all.

It doesn't help.

He sees the fear in Ha-eun's face, going soul-deep. He feels it curl in his own bones. Sees the noble defector struggle for his forfeit life. He knows who he is, what he must do. But all his mind is occupied with is humanity, their wonderful inventions, their television shows, their unpredictable lives.

He feels…guilty. As if he should not dare think of such things, for they are not his. They once belonged on the other side of a window, far out of his reach…

Raizel totters to a stop.

He pauses on a small hill on the side of the road, watching the city lights blink brighter than the stars in the sky, brighter than moonlight in water. It is alive with movement, music, electricity and gasoline, things always happening. There are people eating delicious food down there. There are people dancing. Living. People built this city from nothing, and he wonders if he is the only noble who has the honour of knowing just how amazing that is, seeing it from the bottom of those buildings instead of on top of them.

He just stands there, listening to insects singing in the night.

There is no sea in sight, just mountains of buildings, the odd hill. Raizel thinks, if he left right now, tells his friends he is  _'walking home,'_ and means it — can he? Can he find his way back to Lukedonia? Can he even find his way to his mansion when  _on_  Lukedonia?

Does it bother him at all — that he can't?

In lieu of the sea, the city gleams and shimmers. Streams of cars roll down tiny toy roads. They are going somewhere, stopping politely at traffic lights, then going again. Raizel wonders where they go. If they are going home, or leaving far away.

After a few hours, a car, a life-size one, rolls up to the sidewalk opposite and winds down the window.

It's Frankenstein. Raizel spots him staring wide-eyed at him. He decides to call out, but stops himself before he can. He doesn't know what to say.

Frankenstein doesn't call out either. He sits there in the driver's seat, saying nothing. All of a sudden, as if he has finished being stunned, he simply sits back, looks forward so as to not intrude, and stays there. He's waiting for him, Raizel knows, and the gesture means he will wait for him for however long Raizel decides.

Raizel turns back towards the city lights, takes in its beauty one last time, then leaves. He opens the car door, sits in the passenger seat and does up the seatbelt. There's a thermos wedged between them, undoubtedly full of his favourite tea. He reaches to touch it — it's barely lukewarm. Frankenstein must have prepared it a long time ago. How long had he being driving around the neighbourhood, looking for him?

When Raizel finally has the mind to check his phone, he realises he's missed twenty three calls.

Six are from M-21, two are from Tao, and the rest are from Frankenstein. There are a few texts from Takeo:  _Where are you? Frankenstein asks what you want for dinner. Ikhan said you're at Yuna's, do you need a pickup? Sir, you need to tell me where you are. Your ramen is overgrown._ One From Ikhan:  _Takeo texted me, did you try to walk home by yourself?_ And one from Tao:  _How do you feel about me being fired? Please come home._ Raizel mentally calculates throwing himself off the picturesque bridge he saw earlier.

It's late.

It's  _very_  late and he's worried everyone.

If Frankenstein is angry or frustrated with him for missing all his calls, taking time out of his busy day to check and make sure Raizel is ok, he does not show it. Frankenstein smiles, puts his gloved hands on the wheel.

"Where would you like go, Master?"

Raizel's brows crease a little. It's so late. Shouldn't they just go back to the house? He doesn't want Frankenstein to fire Tao.

"Are you not here to take me back to the house?"

"I am here to take you wherever you please." Frankenstein puts his foot on the break, starts up the car.

"I don't know…" Raizel says, looking at his knees.

The silence drags on like a looming fog. The car rumbles powerfully beneath them. Frankenstein shuts the engine off again, grounding them.

"My Lord," Frankenstein starts.

His Lord. Frankenstein only says that to remind Raizel Frankenstein is beneath him, and that anything he asks him to do, he will do it. It makes the two of them sound so — so antiquated. People don't say that in this world, not anymore. If anyone hears him call him that, they will get the wrong idea. Sometimes, he himself gets the wrong idea. Eight hundred and twenty years, and he still has Frankenstein tied to him. Is this good going?

"My Lord…are you homesick?"

"Homesick?" Raizel echoes.

"Do you wish to go back to Lukedonia?" Frankenstein says it casually, but there is tension in his shoulders, in the way his knuckles clench through his gloves, just a bit. "I know things must be hard for you. Waking up in the twenty first century. Everything is different. I'll understand if you want to go back to somewhere that is familiar."

But they both know that is a lie. A white lie, maybe, a harmless one, a comforting one. But outside of Raizel's mansion in the woods, there is not one part of Lukedonia that is familiar to Raizel. Though they both know why he feels the pull to go back.

"What is it like today?" Raizel asks.

Frankenstein shakes his head. "I haven't been back since you vanished."

He thinks on that. It's strange, yet at the same time not — that Frankenstein has no reason to be there without him. But Frankenstein mistakes the silence for an inadequate answer, as he adds belatedly, "Perhaps you could ask Regis and Seira, when they're back."

Raizel looks out the window. He almost feels startled that the city is still there, with it's humdrum rush and blinking lights. "Why do you follow me, Frankenstein?"

"What?"

A few cars speed past them, making Raizel's bangs fly. He realises that his hair is — somehow — still tied up from the PC Bang, by Suyi nonetheless. He pulls at his hair, putting it down again. He looks at Suyi's hair tie like it is a holy treasure before keeping it securely on his wrist. Frankenstein instantly takes out a small, foldable comb and hands it to Raizel. He just jabs at his bangs twice then hands it back.

"I follow you because I want to."

"But why?"

Frankenstein pulls back. He looks distraught. "Do you…want to dismiss me?" he says cautiously, carefully emotionless. Jumping to the most logical reason for that question, without the knowledge of the past day Raizel has spent masquerading.

"No. I just wonder why you haven't dismissed me. Like the rest of my people."

Frankenstein twists to face towards him, but there is only so much space in the car. "No one has dismissed you. You were  _attacked,_  Master. You were — they  _betrayed_  you. But rest assured. I will hunt down those who hurt you to my dying breath."

Raizel wants to say  _'but why.'_  But he doesn't, because it will only make Frankenstein feel worse than he's already made him feel.

"I am not homesick, Frankenstein. I do not wish to return to Lukedonia." He admits it, feeling like he has said a curse word. Something you can get detention for, because it is bad to say those things out loud, even worse for other people to hear it.

"Then don't," Frankenstein says.

"…But I must return," Raizel purses his lips, breathing in like a man who has just burst to the surface after diving too deep. "I do not belong in the world of men. I am not human. Being here, am I not abandoning my duty? Have I not left Lukedonia —  _and humans_  — at the mercy of noble criminals?"

He'd started to murmur, not even loud enough to be heard clearly from inside the car, so he opens the bond. "And yet — I do not know if the Noblesse has a place in Lukedonia anymore. It's been too long. I've grown weak. Without the Noblesse, I do not know who I am supposed to be."

Raizel screws his eyes shut as if in pain. He isn't — but he's talked so much he's embarrassed.

He leans over, putting his face in his hands, pressing hard. "Thinking about staying here and is so, so  _selfish._ But thinking about going back to my old role in an utterly foregone age is just so — terribly  _presumptuous._ I want to stay, but I can't. I need to leave, but I won't."

Frankenstein takes a moment to think. After a long, silent pause, he speaks calmly. "I — I don't follow you because you are — or were — the Noblesse. I follow you because you're kind. Because you are just. And good. And because it pleases me! I have freewill, and I can do with it whatever I want! — and what I want is to be by your side!"

Raizel's mouth parts. Frankenstein seems to shrink in the driver's seat, like he has said too much. Like he deeply regrets raising his voice. Or even looking Raizel in the eye.

"…I brought you to my house and enrolled you in my school — so you can have the things you've always wanted. You can have it, Master. You have a choice. I…" Frankenstein pauses, wondering if it was too late to stop, to take it back, but he's already started. "…I thought you'd go back sooner. And that I'd drop my life here and leave with you. Tonight…I thought you were going to leave without me. But I should have known. You are too selfless to know what to do when there is no one's opinion left to obtain."

Raizel swallows. If this was the Frankenstein from eight hundred or so years ago, he would never have dared say this to him. Time has ravaged Lukedonia, the nobles. It has even touched Frankenstein. He says he wants to hunt all who hurt him. Raizel thinks, _what about all the hurt I have caused you?_

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise," Frankenstein says, harshly, almost. "Do not apologise to your servant. You've always apologised just for  _existing_."

Raizel looks to him, not knowing what to say.  _"…Now what?"_

"I don't know, Master. You don't need to have everything figured out. You don't even need to announce to Lukedonia you're alive just yet. We can do that later. Whenever you want. Please, Master," Frankenstein says, "Just think of yourself. What do you want?"

Raizel imagines. Like a human would. Like a schoolboy, with his whole future ahead of him, infinite possibilities.

He is Rai, because his friends call him Rai, because they care. He is Cadis Etrama di Raizel, because that is who he is, who Frankenstein follows. He is the Noblesse, because that is what people require in their time of need, and he is always willing to oblige.

He gets an idea. A terrible, childish idea.

"Drive, Frankenstein."

Frankenstein nods, puts his foot on the break, and starts the car again. "Where to, Master?"

"Anywhere," Raizel says. "We can goanywhere. Do anything."

Be anyone. Unapologetically.

Frankenstein's eyes widen, watching Raizel intently. Does he think that is as terrible and childish as Raizel thinks?

"Yes. We can."

He starts to drive, with no destination in sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
